The Dutch in the original article has been translated into English by Marienella Meulensteen.

The
recent screaming headlines about the problems at Shell bear witness to
a much larger and gloomy reality than the 'structural decline' of
a company. This reality can be summed up with the words Peak Oil. Peak Oil is the moment
that an oilfield of the worldwide oil production has reached its peak,
after which it becomes more and more difficult to pump up the oil
reserves, and finally the costs will exceed the benefits. Without
affordable oil, the world economy will collapse, and the consequences
will be famine, chaos and war. What has to happen is that necessary
measures are taken to absorb to damages of the scarcity of oil as best
as possible. Leaders and citizens must be prepared, lifestyles must be
adapted and alternatives must get free range. Unfortunately, up to now
the only measures that have been taken are to insure that the U.S. has
access to oil.

'Shell finds itself in a structural decline', headlined the NRC on June 23.
The company had to 'readjust' more than
one fifth of the predicted oil reserves. At the same time, the price of
gas is rising. On July 5 NRC cites CBS, which states that because of
the increase of fuel prices, the consumer index has risen. Courier DHL wrote
recently to its customers: 'Due to constantly rising fuel prices, DHL is obliged to implement a fuel surcharge'. The
demand for oil keeps rising (just think of the lifestyle of the U.S.
and the developing lifestyle of China), while the reserves are
shrinking.

Peak Oil nearPeak Oil is a problem because the peak is very near. CNN writes
in connection with a publication
in New Scientist: 'The world's oil reserves are up to 80 percent less
than predicted, a team from Sweden's University of Uppsala says'. The
CNN article dated from 2003 and in the meantime, the
researchers adjusted their predictions,
downward that is: the oil peak will not take place in 2010, but in
2008. And the gas peak follows soon thereafter. The research team is being led by Colin Campbell,
founder of ASPO,
the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, and Professor Kjell Aleklett
of the Universiteit of Uppsala, who says: '"The thing we are surprised
of is that people in general are not aware of the decline in supplies
and the extent to which it will affect production. "The decline of oil
and gas will affect the world population more than climate change."
'George Bush and Dick Cheney may have meant it when they said that the
American way of life is not negotiable. But it most certainly is on
life-support and being sustained by cruelty, brute force and
lies', writes
research journalist Mike Ruppert.

Promises energy industry were false
Research journalist Mike Ruppert has been following the subject of Peak Oil diligently for several years and reports
at the annual conference on Peak Oil by ASPO: 'In his presentation,
Matthew Simmons, CEO of Simmons and Company International, the world’s
largest investment bank reeled off a litany of “mistakes”
made by the energy industry over decades. He described some of these
mistakes as: Demand
was never understood properly; Supply was merely aspiration (not actual
reality); Decline curves became waterfalls [...]. Simmons
described these mistakes as cascading and compounding over time and
suggested that the underlying cause of all of them was the inherent
assumption pushed by the financial markets that growth could possibly
be infinite when nothing else in the physical universe is;
when no organism or species has ever avoided the cycle of growth,
maturity and decline that governs the natural world'.

Largest oilfield nears end
Ruppert: 'Economic growth is not possible without increased energy
production.' So new oilfields have to be discovered immediately. There
is a big search going on, but nowhere is there 'anything near the
two or three Ghawar fields we need to find immediately to avert a
crisis'. Ghawar is the largest oilfield in the world, but according
to Ruppert it is old and running out, just like the other large
oilfields of Saudi Arabia. 'As William Kennedy, a UK observer at the
conference noted afterwards, “For the record, Ghawar’s
ultimate recoverable reserves in 1975 were estimated at 60 billion
barrels – by Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and Chevron. It had produced 55
billion barrels up to the end of 2003 and is still producing at 1.8
billion per annum. That shows you how close it might be to the end. When
Ghawar dies, the world is officially in decline”'.

'Crisis and war inevitable'
Dr. Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari
is Vice President of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).
Ruppert: In his presentation, Bakhtiari told the conference, ‘The
crisis is very, very near. World War III has started. It has
already affected every single citizen of the Middle East. Soon it
will spill over to affect every single citizen of the world. Syria’s
oil production is in terminal decline. Yemen is following. Major Middle
East producers, including Saudi Arabia, will peak soon or have already
peaked.’ Off the stage he was even more direct, “The present war cannot
be confined to the Middle East. It will soon spill over to the rest
of the world. The final implications will upset the global applecart”'.

Solutions for the problem
Solutions are hard to find, but are being prepared. According
to Ruppert, coal was the word that was on everybody's tip of the
tongue during the conference on Peak Oil, but coal is more of an
antiquated patch than a structural solution. Hydrogen, according to
Ruppert, cannot be called a reasonable and applicable alternative,
considering the figures; He does not even talk about free
energy.
Formerly cited Matthew Simmons sees solutions in the more
efficient use of energy and working in shifts, instead of everyone
working from nine to five. 'Public Enemy Number One, according to
Simmons, is not SUVs [large cars] but air conditioning.'
Possibly it is too early to talk about solutions. The transitory phase is at least of equal importance. First
things first. Read all about it in the Uppsala
Protocol, a guide for the transitory phase, written by Professor
Kjell Aleklett of the Universiteit of Uppsala, and Colin Campbell, founder of ASPO.
Ruppert
notes another interesting point Campbell made: According to Campbell, BP is an even bigger magician with numbers than Shell. Keep your eye on the newspaper, and on DeepJournal,
because also in the future we will keep reporting on Peak Oil.